Thursday, June 30, 2005

Four (East St. Louis) defendants -- Jessie Lewis, Sheila Thomas, Yvette Johnson and former city official Kelvin Ellis -- were found guilty of conspiracy to commit election fraud and election fraud. All worked for the Democratic Party during the election last November.

Democratic Party boss and former City Councilman Charlie Powell was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit election fraud.

The five were charged with paying voters up to $10 a vote to vote for Democratic candidates during the Nov. 2 general election.

These recalcitrant detainees are known euphemistically as being “non-compliant.” They attack guards whenever the soldiers enter their cells, trying to reach up under protective facemasks to gouge eyes and tear mouths. They make weapons and try to stab the guards or grab and break limbs as the guards pass them food.

Update 2: Following the Court's own logic, the Supreme Court building itself should be bulldozed. It has been a blight on America since Roe v. Wade. Washington residents would be much better served by a parking garage... or a Taco Bell... (Update 5: Scrappleface wrote something similar.)

Update 6: Instapundit liked to this Yahoo article, in which International Economic Development Council president Jeffrey Finkle is quoted as saying:

"I can't imagine that this Supreme Court ruling will all of a sudden cause every city council member to risk alienating their constituents by rampantly doing eminent domain."

I don't have to imagine it, Mr. Finkle, I've seen it. Perhaps not by "every city council member", but "rampantly doing eminent domain" will take over property like kudzu if this ruling is not reversed.

A flag has to be worth torching. When a flag gets burned, that's not a sign of its weakness but of its strength. If you can't stand the heat of your burning flag, get out of the superpower business. It's the left that believes the state can regulate everyone into thought-compliance. The right should understand that the battle of ideas is won out in the open.

Friday, June 24, 2005

(Lileks has a more polite take on the diatri... er, 'article' in question. He also provides a direct link to it, which is more than it deserves.)

Okay. Now I get it.

No he doesn't.

And because I do, I now have a better understanding for the likes of President Bush, Pat Robertson - even John Carlson. They can't help themselves.

I now have a better understanding for the likes of Howard Dean, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Kleagle Byrd. They're brainwashed.

According to a new study published in the American Political Science Review, being politically conservative is, in part, a matter or genetics.

According to the facts, being politically liberal is a matter of brainwashing.

I've long wondered how an otherwise seemingly rational person could adhere so strictly to stilted ideologies; how they could be so consistently willing to smother a sense of social well-being.

I've long wondered how these idiots could adhere so strictly to faulty ideologies; how they could, while calling themselves 'caring' and 'tolerant', be so consistently willing to kill anyone, especially non-whites and unborn babies, who stands in their way.

It's merely a matter of having been dumped in the shallow end of the gene pool.

It's merely a matter of having been brainwashed.

They're sorta like the puppy who piddles in the middle of the floor: They just don't know any better.

He's so devoid of independent thought, the idea that others can think for themselves never crosses his mind.

To be sure, the study says that how someone is raised may determine their political party affiliation, but it's genetics that appears to set one on a philosophically conservative course.

To be sure, the study says that how poorly their parents raised them may determine their political party affiliation, but it's brainwashing that appears to set one on a philosophically liberal course.

To me, that helps explain why PBS threatens their intellect, or why they are so at peace with going to war.

To me, that helps explain why Fox threatens their intellect, or why they are so at peace with killing babies.

It's not that conservatives mean to favor the rich over the poor and middle class.

It's not that liberals mean to live in a fantasy world where actions have no consequences. (Did someone say Chappaquiddick?)

And it's not that they'd rather drill for oil than preserve the environment.

And it's not that they'd rather supplicate themselves to fascists, terrorists, and totalitarians than lift one finger to help anyone but themselves.

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Managers: Here's a paradigm shift you should use when you are evaluating employees for upcoming promotions. Be suspicious of "brown-nosers" and "yes-men".

It is most likely that the employees who are sucking up to you are doing so because they are the least competent at their jobs and know it. Your most productive employees do not have time to suck up because they are busy doing actual work. To really improve productivity and morale, reward those who are productive, rather than those who spend all their time telling you how productive they are.

As an exercise, fire the next person who comes in and sits down in your office just to ask how your weekend was. That person is a slacker. You should see a sharp boost in productivity soon after. (Of course, that sort of termination may not be allowed in a union shop. In such circumstances, you may ignore this advice, because your company will likely be bankrupt in a couple of years anyway.)

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

I've always hated prank calls, hidden camera stunts, and 'practical' jokes on TV (and real life). On the other hand, I'm no big fan of Tom Cruise or the cult to which he belongs, but he didn't deserve this kind of treatment.

The Democrats have absolutely no credibility left (pun intended), and their insane rantings are a worse threat to America than AlQaeda currently is. If only wecould getthem togo outwith awhimper instead of a YEEAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

There has never been such a hilarious satire written in the annals of human history!!!! It is a bazillion times funnier than the all the Monty Python sketches put together!!!!! The uproarious laughter directed at it will cause massive earthquakes, and may change the planet's orbit!!!!!!!!

Friday, June 17, 2005

We had some visitors at work today who gave us short notice before they were to arrive. Just after the announcement was made, I sent a quick a.i.m. message to a coworker. Transcript follows:

(edited for spelling & clarity, and the names have been changed to protect the guilty...)

me: if i knew they were coming, i'da baked a cakecw: it would have been for nothing, because i'da eaten it by the time they arrivedme: if i knew you'da ate it, i'da locked it upcw: if i knew you'da locked it up, i'da make a copy of da keyme: if i knew you'da copied it, i'da used a combination lockcw: if i knew you would resort to such lengths, i'da got a bolt cutterme: if i knew you'da bought them, i'da hired some guardscw: if i knew you'da hired some guards, i'da taken over the company so they have to follow my orders or get firedme: if i knew you'da done that, i'da given upcw: i hope that is a good cake...me: it's an anchovy cake with rutabaga frostingcw: perfect!

Like the monster in some ghastly horror movie rising from the dead for the umpteenth time, the space shuttle is back on the launch pad. This grotesque, lethal white elephant — 14 deaths in 113 flights — is the grandest, grossest technological folly of our age. If the shuttle has any reason for existing, it is as an exceptionally clear symbol of our corrupt, sentimental, and dysfunctional political system. Its flights accomplish nothing and cost half a billion per. That, at least, is what a flight costs when the vehicle survives. If a shuttle blows up — which, depending on whether or not you think that 35 human lives (five original launchworthy Shuttles at seven astronauts each) would be too high a price to pay for ridding the nation of an embarrassing and expensive monstrosity, is either too often or not often enough** — then the cost, what with lost inventory, insurance payouts, and the endless subsequent investigations, is seven or eight times that.

Translation: The Space Shuttle is an old and flawed design, created and operated by bureaucracies with conflicting interests, cost far too much, and has had some spectacularly tragic failures. Agreed.

Also noted: Umpteen = 113.

There is no longer much pretense that shuttle flights in particular, or manned space flight in general, has any practical value.

The shuttle itself, perhaps, but all manned space flight? That's a bit presumptuous.

You will still occasionally hear people repeating the old NASA lines about the joys of microgravity manufacturing and insights into osteoporesis (sic), but if you repeat these tales to a materials scientist or a physiologist, you will get peals of laughter in return. To seek a cure for osteoporesis by spending $500 million to put seven persons and 2,000 tons of equipment into earth orbit is a bit like… well, it is so extravagantly preposterous that any simile you can come up with falls flat. It is like nothing else in the annals of human folly.

Is it as extravagantly preposterous as seeking (in vain) a cure for inequality by killing 100 million people as communism did? Perhaps you can't think of a simile in the annals of human folly, but that doesn't mean one doesn't exist.

Having no practical justification for squirting so much of the nation’s wealth up into the stratosphere, our politicians — those (let us charitably assume there are some) with no financial or electoral interest in the big contractor corporations who feed off the shuttle — fall back on romantic appeals to Mankind’s Destiny.

So politicians make appeals not based on reason and practicality. In light of recent insane rants by certain Democratic senators, is he surprised by this?

The rest of the president’s address on that occasion was, to be blunt about it, insulting to the memories of the astronauts who died, and still more insulting to their grieving spouses, children, parents, and friends. If these astronauts believed that “they had a high and noble purpose in life,” they were mistaken, and someone should have set them straight on the point. Please note that “if.” The motivation of shuttle astronauts would, I suspect, make a very interesting study for some skillful psychologist.

Your diatribe is far more insulting than the president's speech, Mr. Derbyshire, and your motivation for writing it would make another very interesting study for some skillful psychologist.

Here is Ken Bowersox, one of the astronauts who was actually on board the International Space Station (steady now, Derb, husband your wrath) when Columbia blew up. He is writing in the June 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics, putting the “pro” case in a debate on the continuation of the Shuttle program, versus former NASA historian Alex Roland arguing the “con.” Bowersox:

I’ve wanted to be in space from the time I was listening to the radio and heard about John Glenn circling the earth. Columbia was the klind of blow that could have made me walk away from it. As astronauts, though, we wouldn’t have been on the space station if we didn’t believe in the program. Even after losing our friends and our ride home, we still believed that exploration was important.

Far be it from me to pull rank on Astronaut Bowersox, but I’ve wanted to be in space for somewhat longer than that — since seeing those wonderful pictures by Chesley Bonestell in The Conquest of Space, circa 1952, or possibly after being taken to the movie Destination Moon at around the same time. The imaginative appeal of space travel is irresistible. I don’t think I could resist it, anyway. Even with two young kids who need me, and a wife who (I feel fairly sure) would miss me, I would still, if given the opportunity to go into space tomorrow, be on the next flight to Cape Canaveral. As Prof. Roland says in that Popular Mechanics exchange: “The real reason behind sending astronauts to Mars is that it’s thrilling and exciting.” Absolutely correct. The danger? Heck, we all have to go sometime. As President Bush said, I am sure quite truly: “These astronauts knew the dangers, and they faced them willingly…” It’s the president’s next clause I have trouble with: “…knowing they had a high and noble purpose in life.” Did they really know that?

My experience of pointless make-work, which is much more extensive than I would have wished when starting out in life, is that people engaged in it know they are engaged in it. Whether they mind or not depends on the rewards. For a thousand bucks an hour, I’d do make-work all day long — aye, and all night too! Astronaut salaries don’t rise to anything like that level, of course; but there are rewards other than the merely financial. I hope no one will take it amiss — I am very sorry for the astronauts who have died in the shuttle program, and for their loved ones — if I quietly speculate on whether, being engaged in such a supremely thrilling and glamorous style of make-work, one might not easily be able to convince oneself to, as Astronaut Bowersox says, “believe in the program.”

None of which is any reason why the rest of us should believe in it, let alone pay for it.

I hope he will not take it amiss if I quietly speculate on whether, being engaged in such a supremely 'thrilling' and 'glamorous' style of journalism, he might not easily be able to convince himself to believe in the agenda.

None of which is any reason why the rest of us should believe in it.

There is nothing — nothing, no thing, not one darned cotton-picking thing you can name — of either military, or commercial, or scientific, or national importance to be done in space, that could not be done twenty times better and at one thousandth the cost, by machines rather than human beings. Mining the asteroids? Isaac Asimov famously claimed that the isotope Astatine-215 (I think it was) is so rare that if you were to sift through the entire crust of the earth, you would only find a trillion atoms of it. We could extract every one of that trillion, and make a brooch out of them, for one-tenth the cost of mining an asteroid.

I suspect he's right about much of this. I especially agree that it would be inefficient to pick cotton in space. But if an asteroid made of pure Astatine-215 (or some other ultra-rare raw material) were found, suddenly the exploration wouldn't seem so foolish. Let's let the free market decide how much risk is appropriate in exploration.

The gross glutted wealth of the federal government; the venality and stupidity of our representatives; the lobbying power of big rent-seeking corporations; the romantic enthusiasms of millions of citizens; these are the things that 14 astronauts died for.

The term "died for" is loaded, and Mr. Derbyshire knows it. I agree that government waste, inefficiency, bureaucratic stupidity, and corporate greed are no good, and probably caused their deaths. However, the astronauts did not have any intention of "dying for" (in the grander sense) the aforementioned causes.

To abandon all euphemism and pretense, they died for pork, for votes, for share prices, and for thrills (immediate in their own case, vicarious in ours).

Is he saying he is thrilled at their deaths?

I mean no insult to their memories, and I doubt they would take offense.

Oh suuure, how could anyone be offended at that? If we are to believe that, we should also doubt that Mr. Derbyshire would be offended when the astronauts' families make cross-country trips just to spit in his face.

I am certain that I myself would not — certain, in fact, that, given the opportunity, I would gleefully do what they did, with all the dangers, and count the death, if it came, as anyway no worse than moldering away in some hospital bed at age ninety, watching a TV game show, with a tube in my arm and a diaper round my rear end. I should be embarrassed to ask the rest of you to pay for the adventure, though.

At least we can agree that the 'pump has been well-primed' for space travel, and removal of governments' monopoly on space travel is a good and desirable result. But he should be embarrassed for insulting the people - living and dead - who did that initial hard work.

** There are actually reasons to think we may have been lucky so far. News item: “Steve Poulos, manager of the Orbiter Projects Office at Johnson Space Center in Houston, acknowledges there is ‘a debate’ inside the agency about the threat posed by space debris. One school of thought is that a fatal debris strike is ‘probable,’ Poulos said. But he said others think such an event is likely to be ‘infrequent’." Uh-huh.

I agree with his assessment of the odds here. There's a lot of junk up there, and in a worst case scenario, impacts could set off a chain reaction resulting in a very expensive dust ring for our planet. Given that economic risk, the free market just might find a solution...

(update: Upon rereading this, I realize that a pure "free market" has its own set of drawbacks, so I did some slight editing in that regard.)

Thursday, June 16, 2005

One of our local UHF stations plays Mad About You reruns in the afternoon. Last week they aired an episode which began with Paul and Jamie playing Scrabble. Paul had put down the letters to make the non-word "hing", and was trying to convince Jamie that it was really a word. Jamie challenged Paul about it and asked him to use it in a sentence, to which he replied (something like) "I won the game of Scrabble by playing the word 'hing'."

The whole Michael Jackson trial gave me the creeps, so I didn't comment on it, and plan never to do so again. Molten Thought makes several good points about it though, including:

1. Instead of jury instructions, perhaps California jurors ought to get a dictionary with the pages for "reasonable" and "doubt" dog-eared.

4. If MJ and OJ are any indication, "Celebrity Justice" is alive and well in America. If Will Smith ever decides to chainsaw a bunch of people to death, he's got a Get Out of Jail Free card for sure. I'm not so sure that 50 Cent would get a pass, though---he may not have enough Tiger Beat covers to beat a felony rap. And if Jennifer Garner gets the murder bug, watch out, America!

As dissenting Justice Clarence Thomas warned, "If the majority is to be taken seriously, the federal government may now regulate quilting bees, clothes drives and potluck suppers throughout the 50 states."

Didn’t see all the political overtones, perhaps because I wasn’t in a mood to look for them. Expecting pithy pointy political insight from Lucas is like reading transcripts of Spongebob episodes to learn about perils and stresses on the marine ecosystem. But before the fight on the Molten Lava Planet – where any metal object exposed 24/7 can nevertheless be firmly grasped without incident – Darth says to Obi:

“You’re either with me or you’re my enemy.”

Obi sighs. The sun is behind him, so we know he’s in the right here. “Only Siths deal in absolutes,” he says.

Well, Obster, you’re not with him, right? And you’ve come to kill him, right? So Darth has a point. One might say that the Jedi failure to deal in absolutes, such as make absolutely sure Vader is absolutely dead instead of leaving him to bake like a tater tot left overnight in the broiler machine, might have served everyone well.

I also liked the bits about Yoda, the Wookies, and Coruscant apartment building codes.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

I can't GitmoSat-is-fac-tionI can't GitmoSat-is-fac-tionCuz I lied and I liedand I lied and I liedI can't Gitmo

When I'm watchin' CNNAnd that man comes to the podiumSayin' stuff I don't want you to knowAbout some factual informationWith a military abbreviationI can't Gitmo, oh no no noHey hey hey, that's what I say

I can't GitmoSat-is-fac-tionAbout GitmoAll the facts shunCuz I lied, and I liedand I lied, and I liedAbout Gitmo

When I'm watchin' the BBCAnd that man comes on to tell meHow Iraqis can be freeBut that can't be a plan'cause he does not hateAmerica like meI can't Gitmo, oh no no noHey hey hey, that's what I say

About GitmoAll the facts shunBald-faced lies willGet more traction

When I'm lyin' the worldAbout Saddam, Bin Laden, and ArafatAnd I'm parrotin' the terroristswho tells me some guy whizzed on his bookor maybe gave him a dirty lookI can't Gitmo, oh no no noHey hey hey, that's what I say

About GitmoAll the facts shunSaid they keep 'emGulag fashionCuz I lied, and I liedand I lied, and I liedAbout Gitmo

Many readers of the New York Post... were one morning shocked to read that former Beatle John Lennon had become a devout fan of none other than televangelist Pat Robertson... in the late 1970s Lennon had taken to watching Billy Graham on TV... one day, he had an epiphany — he allowed himself to be touched by the hand of Jesus Christ, and it drove him to tears of joy and ecstasy... Every other sentence out of John’s mouth was ‘Thank You, Jesus or Thank you, Lord.’”

...Lennon would not be the first popular icon to pursue, for a time at least, the traditional version of Jesus. Bob Dylan’s conversion to Christianity is well known, and appears to be intact. And last year, the London Spectator informed readers that Keith Richards, famed dope sponge and Rolling Stones guitarist, had seen the light, perhaps thanks to the influence of wife Patti, whom biographer Christopher Sandford calls a “devout Lutheran” and who attends a weekly Bible study and “won’t stand for swearing around the house.” At the time of their marriage, Patti’s parents told reporters that Richards is an “enthusiastic disciple of Christ” who had “embraced Christ as a way of life.”

The OIC Spokesman urged the United States Government to live up to its responsibilities and not be lenient with the perpetrators of the desecration. He also demanded that those responsible for this despicable crime should be brought to justice immediately and that urgent measures should be taken to calm the tension in the Muslim world and ensure that such detestable acts are not repeated in the future.

and in related news:

The United States Government urged Islamofascists to live up to their responsibilities and not be lenient with the perpetrators of the beheadings, rape rooms, suicide bombings, genocides, brutality against females, and all manner of terrorist activity and barbarism. They also demanded that those responsible for this barrage of despicable crimes should be brought to justice immediately and that urgent measures should be taken to calm the tension in the rest of the world and ensure that such detestable acts are not repeated in the future.

My first reaction was "Good!" My second reaction was also "Good!" My third reaction was "Maybe he'll feel bad enough to finally tell the truth about everything he did, and testify about all the euro-rats who were in on the oil-for-food scam."

Pardon me for being somewhat less than sympathetic to his plight. I'm still catching up fromallthosehekilled.

The Washington Post late this afternoon confirmed that W. Mark Felt, the former FBI official, was legendary Watergate source "Deep Throat."

So let's get this straight - one disgruntled employee gossips to two low-lifes about a third-rate burglary, and he's a hero. But hundreds of witnesses (like Vince Foster) with reams of evidence against the Clintons aren't?

As I was waiting in vain for the Rangers' game to start last Saturday, I had time to wander around Ameriquest Field. There were lots of booths and kiosks selling a wide variety of items, but one kiosk surprised me. They were selling some sort of frozen tropical fruit drink, but the name of the stand was "Maui Wowie"...

uhh... "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Bloggers are under attack because we try to find stuff out. We are under attack because we say what we believe to be true. (Even more annoyingly, we are protected by the Constitution.) We are a reality-based institution standing up to an anti-faith media culture, and we are paying for it...